A Pentecost letter from Fr Alvaro Corcuera, LC, to the Legionaries and Regnum Christi consecrated members.

June 16, 2011. In the following letter, Fr Alvaro Corcuera,
LC, shares some reflections about the role of the Virgin
Mary at Pentecost, and about some dispositions for receiving the
gifts of the Holy Spirit.

"On this solemnity, I would
like to invite you to live a special spirit of
prayer and supplication, hand in hand with Mary. Let us
insistently ask God to infuse the gifts of his Spirit
in each one of us, and in the entire Legion
of Christ and Regnum Christi Movement. At this unusual time
in our history, we need the Holy Spirit to lead
us to Jesus. We need the Legion to be more
and more ´of Christ,´ and for the Movement to be
always ´of Christ,´ only his," he writes.

An English translation of
the letter is available below and in pdf format.

***

Thy Kingdom Come!

CONGREGATIOLEGIONARIORUM CHRISTI_______DIRECTOR
GENERALIS

Rome, June 12, 2011

To the Legionaries of
ChristTo the consecrated members of Regnum Christi

Very dear
friends in Christ:

Today we are celebrating the solemnity of Pentecost,
praying for this outpouring of the Holy Spirit to find
us open and in readiness so that he can renew
our heart and fill us with his gifts. The love
of God has been poured out in us through the
Spirit, as Scripture tells us, and this love is the
engine and the source of meaning for our entire life.

Without
a doubt, one of the protagonists of the event of
Pentecost is the Blessed Virgin, with whom the apostles persevered,
united in prayer as they awaited the Holy Spirit. We
just celebrated the month of May, which is dedicated to
her in a special way. Now I would like to
share some reflections on Mary’s relationship to the Holy Spirit.

Contemplating
Mary helps us very much. By her example, she shows
us how to live open to the Holy Spirit’s inspirations,
how to let ourselves be guided by him, as St.
Paul says: “all those who are led by the Spirit
of God are children of God” (Rom. 8:14). St. Luke
the evangelist tells us that soon after receiving the inspiration
to visit her cousin, Mary set out on her journey
“in haste.” She lived filled with God, constantly listened to
his voice, and always responded with alacrity and docility. We
see her walking to Ain Karim, conversing with the “sweet

"Let us insistently ask God to infuse the gifts of his Spirit in each one of us, and in the entire Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi Movement."

guest of the soul” like a living temple of God’s
presence in the world.

Mary, full of grace, let the Spirit
do great works in and through her. Her life was
a song of praise to God. She was gathered with
the apostles in the cenacle while they prayed for the
coming of the Paraclete, the Consoler who Jesus had promised
them, the one who was to guide them into the
full truth, who was to explain so many things that
Jesus had not been able to tell them because they
could not bear the weight. Mary experienced in herself the
fruitfulness and the power of the Spirit that had overshadowed
her. For this reason, she was present at Pentecost and
is always present in the Church that prays and beseeches,
“Come, Holy Spirit!”

On this solemnity, I would like to invite
you to live a special spirit of prayer and supplication,
hand in hand with Mary. Let us insistently ask God
to infuse the gifts of his Spirit in each one
of us, and in the entire Legion of Christ and
Regnum Christi Movement. At this unusual time in our history,
we need the Holy Spirit to lead us to Jesus.
We need the Legion to be more and more “of
Christ,” and for the Movement to be always “of Christ,”
only his. Now that the apostolic visitation to the consecrated
members is concluding and the Legionary communities are immersed in
the process of reflecting on the Constitutions, God asks us
to open ourselves to his plan so that the Legion
and Regnum Christi will be what God wants them to
be. How will everything end up after this process? None
of us has the answer, but we know that the
Risen Christ makes all things new (cf. Rev. 21:5) and
that God acts in everything for the good of those
who love him (cf. Rom. 8:28).

This process requires great
self-detachment from each and every one of us. It means
accepting that we do not have all the answers, but
“the Holy Spirit comes to help us in our weakness”
(Rom. 8:26). The gifts of the Spirit are so wonderful
that only a heart emptied of self can receive them.
It is not a matter of asking the Holy Spirit
to follow our own ideas, but of letting ourselves be
guided by him to find his will. “We do not

know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit
himself intercedes for us with ineffable groanings” (Rom. 8:26). As
the papal delegate wrote to us, instead of creating our
counter-arguments to make our own view prevail, each one must
also look at the others, and be open and ready
to have their own ideas assessed by them. From everyone’s
assessment and contribution, we are called to a discernment that
will lead us along the path of change in the
continuity of the very life of the Congregation.” We need
to live very open to the Spirit to move forward
on this road.

A soul open to the Holy Spirit is
a soul that lives immersed in the theological virtues. Faith
teaches us to find God in all events, also in
setbacks or in our own limitations; supernatural hope takes away
the fears and discouragements that can sometimes paralyze us, and
gives us an unbreakable security in the triumph that comes
from God; the charity that the Spirit pours out into
our hearts fills us with filial love and gives us
the strength to pursue the ideal, regardless of tiredness or
difficulties. What we most need in the Legion and the
Movement is to live these virtues in depth. But this
is not something we can acquire with our own will,
simply by willing it. It is a gift that God
wants to give us if we let the Holy Spirit
fill our hearts and inflame them with the fire of
his love.

We need the gift of the fear of
God so that our only fear will be not responding
to our God-given call to holiness. We need the gift
of fortitude to persevere in the battle and fight the
good fight like St. Paul, who said, “I can do
all things in him who gives me strength.” We need
the gift of piety so as not to work according
to human prudence, but rather to proceed with holy audacity
and let ourselves be surprised by the Spirit. We need
the gift of knowledge to find God’s hand in our
history, and the gift of understanding to see ourselves as
God sees us, to know ourselves as he knows us.

Let
us ask the Holy Spirit to help us grow each
day in discernment so that we will not allow anyone
to take away our peace and interior joy, and so
that no situation will lead us to discouragement, fear, or
mistrust. We already know the fruits of the Spirit that
we need so much: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22). The thoughts and feelings
opposed to these fruits do not come from the Holy
Spirit.

We need the Holy Spirit to renew us from within,
like the apostles, in order to evangelize without fear and
so that nothing will stop or divide us. Benedict XVI
taught the youth that “Apostolic and missionary fruitfulness is not
principally due to programs and pastoral methods that are cleverly
drawn up and ‘efficient,’ but is the result of the
community’s constant prayer. Moreover, for the mission to be effective,
communities must be united, that is, they must be ‘of
one heart and soul’ (cf. Acts 4:32)” (Benedict XVI, Message
to the Youth, Sydney 2008). I believe that if we
are to bear more apostolic fruits, God is asking more
prayer and more charity of us. In some communities and
apostolates, members have spontaneously organized special times of adoration in
front of the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist, writes Pope Benedict,
is a “perpetual Pentecost.” There we discover that “whenever our
strength is not enough, it is the Holy Spirit who
transforms us, filling us with his strength and making us
witnesses suffused by the missionary fervor of the risen Christ.”
(ibid).

I invite you to ask for the grace of the
Spirit’s fire to renew us from within and to do
an examination of conscience about our openness and docility to
the Holy Spirit. Let us seek the grace to open
our heart more and more to receive him and for
him to live in us, so that we will interiorly
accept his will above our own, leaving aside the desire
to control and direct the events of our own life
and letting God take the reins. Along with this letter,
I am sending some texts that can perhaps be useful
for you to reflect and meditate on during these days.

May
Mary, united in prayer with the apostles in the Cenacle,
accompany us always and obtain for all Legionaries and consecrated
members of Regnum Christi the grace of a new and
continual Pentecost in our lives.